← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 16912 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2005-02-23
2005-02-23 13:03 | User Profile
February 23, 2005 Who Lost Russia? by Patrick J. Buchanan
"Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together," Edmund Burke admonished the haughty rulers of the British Empire of his time.
Our American empire is suffering from a similar want of wisdom and plenitude of the hubris that cost George III his 13 colonies.
Consider how this generation of politicians is undoing the great work of Ronald Reagan. When Reagan took office in 1981, the Soviet Union of the aging autocrat Leonid Brezhnev was an "evil empire" that stretched from the Elbe to the Bering Sea with thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on the United States. The Red Army had recently occupied Afghanistan, and Moscow had established imperial outposts in the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America.
Yet the year Reagan departed, 1989, the Soviet empire threw open its prison gates, released the captive nations of Eastern Europe, then peacefully dissolved itself and let 14 republics, many of which the czars had ruled for centuries, become free and independent states.
Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin became strategic partners of American presidents. For once Communism had been exorcised from Russia, there was no ideological, ethnic, or territorial conflict between us. For we live on different continents in hemispheres separated by the world's largest oceans. Moreover, Russia belongs with the West. As Solzhenitzyn wrote, Mother Russia was "the first captive nation."
Both of us also have a vital interest in balancing off a rising and possibly revanchist China and resisting an Islamic fundamentalism that seeks to drive Russia out of the Caucasus and America out of the Middle East.
Thus, as there is no relationship more critical to the security of the West than that between Washington and Moscow, it is with near-despair that one reads the front-page story in the Washington Times: "Senators Seek to Sanction Russia: Say Putin Acts Autocratically."
Who are the senators? They are those twin protectors and proctors of global democracy, Joe Lieberman and John McCain, and they want Putin sanctioned by having the world's industrial democracies, the G-8, suspend Russia's membership, which would be an insult and humiliation.
Putin's crimes? Says McCain: "Mr. Putin has moved to eliminate the popular election of 89 of Russia's regional governors, has cracked down on independent media, continued his repression of business executives who oppose his government, and is reasserting the Kremlin's old-style central control." Says McCain, "The coup is no longer creeping ââ¬â it is galloping."
But a question arises: Why are these internal matters of the Russian republic any business of John McCain's? Putin is the elected president of Russia. Who elected McCain to anything outside of Arizona?
During our Civil War, Lincoln blockaded Southern ports without the approval of Congress, suspended habeas corpus, sent troops to prevent a free election in Maryland, sought to arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, shut down newspapers, shot down rioters on the streets of New York, and made himself dictator of the Union. Was that any business of the members of Britain's House of Lords? Just who do we Americans think we are?
Whether Russia's governors are elected or appointed is none of our business. As for the jailing of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or any of the others in that den of thieves, that is no more our concern than TR's smashing of the trusts or Truman's seizure of the coal mines or Bush's incarceration of Martha Stewart was or is any of Russia's business. As for President Putin acting "autocratically," can Sen. McCain recall when Russian rulers have acted any other way?
Why are McCain and Lieberman bullyragging Russia but not China? After all, Putin was elected, but Hu Jintao was not. Russia has an elected legislature with opposition parties. China has never held a free election. The Russian people have freedom of religion. China persecutes Christians. Russia threatens no U.S. ally. China threatens Taiwan. In a recent issue of Parade, a list was drawn up of the world's 10 worst dictators based on their human rights violations. Hu Jintao was fourth from the top. Putin was not even mentioned.
Since Reagan achieved the rapprochement with Russia, the United States has pushed NATO up to her borders; bombed her ally Serbia for 78 days; interfered in elections in Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus; and begun a pipeline to cut Moscow out of the Caspian oil trade.
Now, Russia is going her own way: selling SAMs to Syria, AK-47s to Venezuela, missiles and fighter aircraft to China, and aiding Iran in completing its first nuclear power plant.
Of this generation of leaders, it may be said in epitaph: They were too small to see the larger world. They frittered away in a decade what others had won in a half-century of perseverance in the Cold War.
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These idiots Neocons better listen to the evil looking Krauthammer on this one. Of all the Neocons he is the only one who possesses a degree of reality unlike the stupid Bill Kristol or the thuggish Perle. He pointed out that pushing these folks can have the opposite effect, i.e. the Russians may tell Bush to go to hell and "we" need them to fight the "war on terror". While Krauthammer's reasons are completely selfish they are still correct from the intelligent point of view that it isn't in the U.S. interest to drive them into the arms of China no matter how many Jewish oligarchs are jailed.
In case anyone hasn't noticed it is primarily Perle who is pushing this wretched idea.
2005-02-23 18:52 | User Profile
Good post Sertorius. :thumbsup:
Jew Charles Krauthammer versus Jews Kristol & Perle (good cop/bad cop).
Same ole, same ole smokin mirrors. Jews taking opposing sides of an important issue like they're really in disagreement.
Always their bottom line? What's best for the Jew.
Truly the race that nauseates!
2005-02-23 19:06 | User Profile
Why are McCain and Lieberman bullyragging Russia but not China?
Two reasons (in decreasing order of importance):
1) China never had a large Jewish population, so it doesn't have a history of "anti-Semitism" for Jews like Lieberman and Kristol (McCain being the latter's sockpuppet) to obsess over. And today, it isn't China that's arresting, fining, and deporting Jewish speculators and thieves like Gusinsky, Berezovsky, and Khodorkovsky.
2) The plutocracy likes cheap, low-quality Chinese-made goods to fill our WalMarts and KMarts, so the Chinese get cut slack by both major parties.
2005-02-23 20:40 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The plutocracy likes cheap, low-quality Chinese-made goods to fill our WalMarts and KMarts, so the Chinese get cut slack by both major parties.[/QUOTE]
Absolutely! This is the plutocratic aspect of all this. To put it crudely, they simply are the sorts who stay awake at night thinking about a person that has a dollar in his billfold they haven't laid hands on yet. Today in the [I]Wall Street Journal[/I] editorial page Henry Hyde is complaining about European sales of weapons to the PRC. In the past the Journal has made a similar complaint. Not mention is the sale of American military technology by Israel to China nor does the Journal acknowlege that the trade policies they advocate are what has made it possilble for China to be an emerging threat in the first place.
2005-02-23 21:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Why are McCain and Lieberman bullyragging Russia but not China? After all, Putin was elected, but Hu Jintao was not. Russia has an elected legislature with opposition parties. China has never held a free election. The Russian people have freedom of religion. China persecutes Christians. Russia threatens no U.S. ally. China threatens Taiwan. In a recent issue of Parade, a list was drawn up of the world's 10 worst dictators based on their human rights violations. Hu Jintao was fourth from the top. Putin was not even mentioned.[/QUOTE]
Great point Mr Buchanan. For all the hot air exhausted from Bush's (and McCain, Lieberman, et al.) mouth about "democracy", this little paragraph shatters their double-standards in a million pieces. I'd also add that Chirac and Schroeder received heaps of scorn from the "democratic" US media in 2003 and for what? Spurning the United States' war in Iraq and yielding to the will of their respective citizens who didn't want to fight an imperial war. Isn't that democracy in action? America doesn't really practice what it preaches, sorry.
2005-02-24 04:25 | User Profile
Pat lists the things the US has done to piss in the face of Russia-- expansion of NATO to Russia's borders, bomb Serbia for 78 days, interfere in Georgian and Ukrainian elections, make moves on Caspian oil, et al. One wonders when Russia will have to start making bold strategic moves for its future welfare, including playing hardball with its one ultimate trump card, nukes.
2005-02-24 05:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]Pat lists the things the US has done to piss in the face of Russia-- expansion of NATO to Russia's borders, bomb Serbia for 78 days, interfere in Georgian and Ukrainian elections, make moves on Caspian oil, et al. One wonders when Russia will have to start making bold strategic moves for its future welfare, including playing hardball with its one ultimate trump card, nukes.[/QUOTE]
Chess, not Poker, is Russia's traditional game. Pure skill; infinite patience, a few choice gambits--and all seven moves in advance...
Resentment of Junior's hubris; Tel Aviv's arrogance and the Plutocracy's greed will topple more than a few pawns from the board. Nukes are just the derringer on the table.